Sixth Doctor
The Sixth Doctor was the sixth incarnation of the Time Lord known as The Doctor. Arrogant, dramatic, self-absorbed, driven, and stubborn, the sixth incarnation instantly believed himself superior to almost anyone he encountered, though he had a very compassionate side only experienced by his companions.
For much of his travels, he was accompanied by Peri. He was separated from her by the Time Lords to be put on a mock trial to cover up his near discovery of why Earth became "Ravalox". Despite his wish to return for Peri, he learned she became the queen of King Yrcanos and decided that she was better off there.
At one point, he gained a secondary companion in a metamorphic Whifferdill named Frobisher while Peri still accompanied him. Bizarrely, Frobisher chose to maintain the form of a penguin for much of his time with the Doctor.
During this incarnation, the Doctor was placed on trial a second time by the High Council of the Time Lords. During this event he "previewed" a future companion named Mel Bush, who would attempt to reform the Doctor into living a healthier lifestyle, much to his chagrin.
This Doctor met his end when the TARDIS was attacked by the Rani, forcing a crash landing. This caused severe, but unspecified physical trauma to the Doctor's body, leading to his next regeneration.
Biography
Post regeneration
The Doctor's fifth incarnation regenerated after being exposed to spectrox toxaemia on Androzani Minor. He regenerated in his TARDIS.
He was immediately challenged by Peri to prove that he was still the Doctor, but got her to believe it was still him despite his new face and personality. The Doctor saw his previous life as unbecoming and was happy to have changed. However, despite having physically stabilised, the Doctor's suffered initial personality and mental issues which caused him lapse into extreme paranoia and attempted to strangle Peri. He decided to exile himself on Titan III as punishment until he had attained appropriate humility, but soon got involved with stopping Mestor and his gastropods. On Titan III, he met another Time Lord, his old friend Azmael. During these early days, the Doctor's personality ranged from extreme lows to bouts of manic near-insanity and violence. (DW: The Twin Dilemma)
Early travels
With Peri and Frobisher
Fortunately (for Peri), The Doctor's personality rapidly settled down into an extremely large ego with a side of compassion only noticed by his closest friends. He set out to fix everything wrong with his aging TARDIS, even succeeding in fixing its broken chameleon circuit; for a brief time, it began changing shape again. All the while he worked to stop the Cybermen from trying to destroy Earth with Halley's comet and save Mondas, which was destroyed by the First Doctor, and keep the Web of Time from being damaged by their carelessness. (DW: Attack of the Cybermen)
After the TARDIS ran out of Zeiton-7, the Doctor landed on Varos to search for more to resupply the TARDIS. However, the society on Varos nearly forced him to participate in their deadly "games" when he attempted to free those trapped in the Punishment Dome. The Doctor managed to stop the swindler behind the "games", Sil, and obtain Zeiton-7 for the TARDIS. (DW: Vengeance on Varos)
Arriving in 19th century England in search of the source of a time distortion, the Doctor found the Master and a female renegade Time Lord called the Rani working together for one of her monsterous experiments and for the Master's plan to accelerate Earth technology beyond its normal level. The Doctor sabotaged the Rani's TARDIS and had her and the Master thrown off into the Time Vortex. (DW: The Mark of the Rani)
When he landed on Space Station Chimera, the Doctor became involved with the Androgum, Chessene. He also encountered his second incarnation and Jamie McCrimmon. Together they foiled a Sontaran bid for time travel and that of Chessene, who wished to have the second Doctor for her consort. The Sixth Doctor was forced to commit murder in self-defence against Chessene's fellow Androgum, Shock-eye and was greatly disgusted with himself while experiencing temporary bouts of Androgum behavior, so much so that at the conclusion of these events, he declared himself to be a vegetarian. (DW: The Two Doctors)
Afterwards, the Doctor and Peri accidentally went through a time corridor to arrive at Karfel, where the sinister Megelen ruled. The Doctor found the amulet that let Megelen throw people to different points in time and space. The Doctor stopped Megelen from mutating Peri into a hideous form similar to his own and sent the villain through the Timelash, where the Doctor believed he would end up becoming the Loch Ness monster. During these events, the Doctor met H.G. Wells, who he unintentionally gave the idea for his book "The Time Machine" to. (DW: Timelash)
Peri parted company with the Doctor for a short time. During this period the Doctor stumbled upon a Whifferdill, a shape-shifter who called himself "Avan Tarklu", a private investigator set upon the Doctor by Josiah W. Dogbolter. Initially the Doctor's tormentor, the Whifferdill decided to travel with the Doctor, change his name to Frobisher and his shape to that of a large, rather cartoonish penguin. (DWM: The Shape Shifter)
The Doctor and Frobisher later reunited with Peri and the trio travelled together for some time before Frobisher took his leave.
While Peri attended a botany symposium, the Doctor responded to a call from a friend, Willis but encountered Davros and was forced by Arnold Baynes, one of the richest men in the galaxy, to work with him. (BFA: Davros)
The Doctor went to the planet Necros to pay his respects to an old friend, Arthur Stengos. It was a trap set by the "Great Healer" to kill him. The Great Healer was in fact Davros, who had arranged for the Doctor to be killed at a funeral home. During his time trading barbs with Davros, the Doctor saw Davros had created Imperial Daleks loyal to him. He was glad the original Daleks were too dense to realise his identity when Davros tried to distract them and escape persecution on Skaro by the Dalek Emperor. (DW: Revelation of the Daleks)
Discovering the illegal use of Cyber-technology on Earth in 1984, the Doctor and Peri returned to that year. (BFA: The Reaping)
final adventures with Peri
After his encounter with the Daleks, the Doctor took Peri to the planet Ravalox to relax. He soon discovered that Ravalox was in fact the planet Earth, moved thousands of light years from its original position by the Time Lords. He met the primitive and dimwitted descendants of humans and prevented a black light explosion by the egotistic Dratho. (DW: The Mysterious Planet)
On the planet Thoros Beta, the Doctor found the Mentors were back at work, trying to make deals with a savage king named Ycarnos. After a failed attempt to probe his mind, the Doctor pretended to be on the Mentors' side and helped Mentor Kiv transplant his mind to a deceased Mentor. When Peri was in danger of having her mind overwritten by Kiv's, the Doctor was put under the control of the Time Lords. They forced him to board his TARDIS and re-materialise in the Space Station Zenobia. (DW: Mindwarp)
The Trial
The Prosecution
The Doctor, whose memory of having been separated from Peri was temporarily suppressed, tried to use his status as Lord President of Gallifrey to avoid a trial. However, they had brought him here long after the Fifth Doctor had been appointed and removed from office due to absence. In the trial, the Valeyard acted as prosecutor, with an Inquisitor, Darkel*. Having been taken out of time, the Doctor suffered from partial amnesia. He was again on trial for interfering in the affairs of the universe. He represented himself in the trial, during which he and his prosecutor, the Valeyard, would present as evidence events from his life via the Matrix. (DW: The Mysterious Planet, Mindwarp) The Doctor suffered an emotional blow as he witnessed the apparent destruction of Peri's mind and her physical death on Thoros Beta. (DW: Mindwarp)
*The Inquisitor's name is not revealed on-screen but was established in later spin-off media.
Defence
The Doctor presented the case for his defence, offering an adventure from his future, by which time he had met an Earth woman Melanie "Mel" Bush. The Doctor was called to a spaceship to be used as a scapegoat to drive out hijackers. However, it turned sour when the Vervoids had emerged from their pods in storage and killed the passengers. The Doctor destroyed them by fast-forwarding their lifecycle. After the footage was shown, the Doctor pointed out that he had gotten better in a short time and deserved to be let go. However, the Valeyard seized on this to charge the Doctor for the genocide of the Vervoids, prohibited by Article 17 of the Constitution. The Doctor pointed out the hole in the Valeyard's claim of genocide; the Vervoids were artificial in nature; they were never truly alive to begin with. (DW: Terror of the Vervoids)
The Valeyard had falsified some of the evidence, including the death of Peri, with the aid of the High Council, to cover up a conspiracy which the Doctor had unknowingly uncovered. By this time, the Doctor had gradually won Darkel over to his side. The Valeyard, who was revealed to be a future incarnation of the Doctor, wished to steal the Doctor's remaining lives with the help of the corrupt Council. Paradoxically, because in the Doctor's timeline he had not met her yet, Mel was brought to the trial as a witness, as well as Sabalom Glitz. His enemy, the Master, intervened. The Doctor pointed out a flaw - the defendant and the prosecutor could not be the same person. Before the trial could be rectified, the Valeyard escaped into the Matrix. The Doctor set off to find him, but ended up nearly being used as a pawn in the Master's attempt to kill the Valeyard. Preventing the Valeyard from killing the Time Lord at his trial, the Doctor set up an explosion within the Matrix that seeming to kill his dark half.
Aftermath
As the populace of Gallifrey reacted to news of the dishonesty of their High Council, they seemed ready to overthrow their leaders. Subsequently, Darkel suggested the Doctor as the new Lord President for the third time, but the Doctor suggested that Darkel herself would make a better choice. The Doctor left in his TARDIS with Mel. The Valeyard, apparently killed inside the Matrix, had actually survived. (DW: The Ultimate Foe)
The Doctor returned Mel to her original point in time following the conclusion of the trial, after which he travelled on alone. (MA: Time of Your Life, PDA: Business Unusual)
Later travels
The Doctor travelled to Bianca's Bar shortly after his trial and became involved in a problem concerning Iris Wildthyme. (BFA: The Wormery)
Following his trial, the Doctor appeared a more sombre individual, (DWM: Time & Time Again) even contemplating suicide. (MA: Killing Ground) He reunited with Frobisher and for a time they again travelled together. (BFA: The Maltese Penguin, PDA: Mission: Impractical)
The Doctor spent some travelling alone. On the planet Torrok, he determined to become a hermit and avoid becoming the Valeyard by not meeting Mel. However, he was interrupted in this venture, eventually meeting a young man, Grant Markham, with whom he travelled for a time. (MA: Time of Your Life)
While visiting the Kurgon Wonder, the Doctor became involved in events involving an alternate timeline, the Knights of Velyshaa and an invasion of Gallifrey. Following his encounter and seeming absorption by the Temperon, he found himself on Gallifrey with his fifth and seventh selves. They worked to escape Gallifrey and set history along its correct path. However it was the sith Doctor who freed the Temperon, allowing it to set history alongst its correct path. (BFA: The Sirens of Time)
The Doctor, at some point after his trial, was tracking nexus point distortion and met Evelyn Smythe. The Doctor took her back in time to stabilise the nexus point and save her life. Evelyn then became the Doctor's latest travelling companion. (BFA: The Marian Conspiracy)
Whilst travelling with Evelyn the Doctor again met his old friend Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, (BFA: The Spectre of Lanyon Moor) and, while on the planet Etra Prime, the Daleks. He helped Romana escape from them and return to Gallifrey. (BFA: The Apocalypse Element)
Further travels alone
After Evelyn ended her travels with the Doctor and settled down on the planet Világ, (BFA: Thicker Than Water) the Doctor travelled alone. In 2001 he received a message from Lethbridge-Stewart via the space-time telegraph, asking for his help with UFOs, Nazis and a conspiracy. (PDA: The Shadow in the Glass)
Travels with Charley, Jamie and Mel
Also after his travels with Evelyn, but before meeting Mel, the Doctor picked up a distress signal from a desert island in the year 500,002. He rescued a young girl named Charley Pollard who, unbeknownst to the Doctor, was, in fact, the companion of one of his later incarnations. (BFA: The Condemned) When Charley left the Doctor to travel with the Viyrans, she altered the Doctor's memories so the Doctor would believe that he travelled with a woman called Mila in order to not damage the Web of Time. (BFA: Blue Forgotten Planet)
The Doctor also at one point was reunited with a version of Jamie McCrimmon, and the two shared several adventures together. (BFA: City of Spires, The Wreck of the Titan, Legend of the Cybermen)
The Doctor finally met Melanie Bush (for the first time in her timeline) on a beach in Brighton in 1989. Mel was a computer programmer. She elected to travel with the Doctor until the end of the Doctor's sixth incarnation. (PDA: Business Unusual) Presumably at some point after this the Doctor and Mel experienced the encounter with the Vervoids chronicled during the Doctor's trial, and the Doctor's personal chronology finally synched with Mel's after she was returned to her proper time zone after having assisted the Doctor earlier in his life during the trial.
Regeneration
The sixth incarnation was weakened by fighting the Lamprey. (PDA: Spiral Scratch) The Rani bombarded his TARDIS with lasers until catching it in a tractor beam, forcing it to land on the planet Lakertya. The Doctor was too physically weakened to stay alive following the crash, so he regenerated into his seventh incarnation. (DW: Time and the Rani)
- For a list of Sixth Doctor stories in the order in which he experienced them, see Sixth Doctor - Timeline.
Undated/Unchronicled events
- The Doctor had met Captain Travers previously. (DW: Terror of the Vervoids)
Encounters with other incarnations
He encountered his second incarnation and Jamie McCrimmon whilst investigating temporal research. (DW: The Two Doctors) The Doctor also met his fifth and seventh incarnations in an alternate timeline. (BFA: The Sirens of Time). He briefly encountered the fifth, seventh and eighth incarnations after helping to change the course of the Jariden / Dalek conflict, but the memory of the meeting was erased by temporal changes. (BFA : The Four Doctors)
Personality
The sixth incarnation saw his new body as an improvement and felt that his fifth incarnation had a feckless charm that wasn't him. This Doctor was unpredictable, consistently arrogant and self-absorbed, stubborn and childish, argumentative and tasteless, and often unlikeable or even loathsome. He could be melodramatic. He rarely doubted his abilities and considered himself greatly superior to nearly everyone he encountered. This included his companions, especially Peri, though he seemed to have mellowed by his time with Evelyn.
He once described this incarnation as pragmatic. (BFA: The Sirens of Time)
He did not suffer fools gladly. He sometimes seemed to endure his companions' presence far more than he enjoyed it, but the new incarnation's brash exterior hid the fact that this was a Doctor more determined than ever to defeat the evil he encountered. He was possessed of a tenacity and a thirst to do what was right far more visible than before. Despite his often unstable demeanour, he was quick to act when the situation called for it, and very little, even his companions, could hope to get in his way. More than his other incarnations, the Doctor was a fatalist, more than once deciding he was doomed and resolving to accept his fate.
During this incarnation he began to see the logic in murder. (EDA: Alien Bodies) This might be reflected in being a bit more accepting of violence. While his physical attack on Peri could be attributed to a post-regenerative crisis, he reacted with humour at witnessing two men fall to their death in an acid bath. (DW: Vengeance on Varos) He smothered Shockeye to death in self defence. (DW: The Two Doctors) He also killed Chintor at close range with a double-barreled shotgun. (DWAN: Retribution) Peri sometimes seemed nervous around the Doctor, (DW: Attack of the Cybermen, Timelash) perhaps due to his initially erratic behaviour.
When Peri was distressed over the non-existence of London, the Doctor tried to comfort her, even showing empathy for her plight. However, he encouraged her not to become emotional. Peri noted he talked about the planet's ruin as if he were in a planetarium instead of there in person. (DW: The Mysterious Planet)
However this incarnation also had a more emotional and caring side. He was determined to save the survivors of the Ravolox conspiracy from Drathro, stating "I can't let people die if there's a chance of saving them." He was devastated when presented with the false news of Peri's demise on Thoros Beta, and was enraged that the Time Lords had decided to act like second rate gods and engineer her execution, threatening he had every intention of discovering what they were up to. When he discovered the Time Lords were behind the Ravolox conspiracy and had murdered billions of humans to preserve their secrets, he announced his purpose was to stop evil and power mad conspirators, but that he should have stayed on Gallifrey and not travelled the universe to do so.
Habits and Quirks
After an unpleasant encounter with an Androgum in Spain, the Doctor said he was becoming a vegetarian, though there is little in the chronicles to suggest he actually followed through with this. ([[DW: The Two Doctors)
Commonly, he would overreact with rage when questioned about his methods or if his plan seemed insane.
He also had a taste for poetry, often reciting bits of it. (DW: The Twin Dilemma, The Mark of the Rani, Terror of the Vervoids) On occasion, the Sixth Doctor would carry a multi-coloured umbrella that matched the clashing colours of his clothing (DW: The Two Doctors, The Mysterious Planet, Time and the Rani).
This Doctor also had a habit of walking in a direction other than his proclaimed intention. This quirk was later mirrored by his tenth incarnation and once by the eleventh incarnation, although these incidents were caused by a lack of knowledge of directions and post-regeneration "steering" problems, respectively.
Appearance
Physically, the Sixth Doctor was a very tall man, with long, curly, blond hair. His companion Mel thought him overweight, and forced him to take up both a diet, consisting mainly of carrot juice, and an exercise regime, neither of which he felt he needed. (DW: Terror of the Vervoids).
Clothes
The sixth incarnation's taste in clothes were the subject of much ridicule, though it was suggested that he wore his outlandish coat in order to distract people from noticing anything else about him. He once mentioned that his coat was the "height of sartorial elegance" (BFA: Jubilee). At some point, the Doctor abandoned his outlandish multi-coloured outfit for a more subdued blue costume, (WC: Real Time) though by the time of his regeneration, he had resumed wearing his original garb. (DW: Time and the Rani)
This Doctor usually wore a variety of waistcoats and cravats to accompany his multi-coloured coat, each of which possessing a different colour and design. He first wore a knitted waistcoat that was dark brown in colour, along with a turquoise polka-dot cravat (DW: The Twin Dilemma - Revelation of the Daleks), though during and beyond the time in which he was put on trial by the Time Lords, he wore a bold red gingham dupion silk waistcoat accompanied by a red polka-dot cravat (DW: The Trial of a Time Lord, Time and the Rani). During his struggle with the Vervoids on the Hyperion III, the Sixth Doctor wore a pink, purple and green dupion silk waistcoat with a yellow cravat decorated with a starfield pattern (DW: Terror of the Vervoids). In the pockets of these waistcoats, he usually bore a neon-green watchchain.
It is also worth noting that this Doctor wore a number of other clothing points during his life. Whilst confronting the Sontarans in Seville, Spain, 1985, the Sixth Doctor briefly replaced his usual outlandish coat and jerkin for an open, Hawaiian style waistcoat. (DW: The Two Doctors). On another occasion, he briefly wore a a blue cape over his usual attire as mourning for the supposed death of Professor Arthur Stengos on Necros (DW: Revelation of the Daleks).
Much like his late fourth and fifth incarnations, the Sixth Doctor also wore a plain white shirt with question marks embroidered on the collar (DW: The Twin Dilemma et. all). Also, like his fifth incarnation, he wore braces adorned with question mark symbols (DW: Vengeance on Varos, The Two Doctors). He also took to wearing a set of striped, yellow trousers during this incarnation. His generally preferred footwear was a pair of orange spats over green ankle boots.
The sixth incarnation was very fond of cats, and always wore one of a number of cat-shaped pins or brooches on his lapel (in lieu of the celery stalks favoured by his predecessor). By the time of his tenth incarnation, however, he had developed a dislike for the animal. (DW: Fear Her, likely due to the events of DW: New Earth)
Behind the scenes
- According to Colin Baker, his coat was created because John Nathan-Turner had the idea that it should be in "very bad taste". He had wanted to wear black to reveal the Doctor's darker side. (DWM: DWM Issue 118 - Colin Baker Interviewed)
- Baker declined an invitation to film the regeneration sequence at the start of Time and the Rani due to the circumstances of his dismissal from the role. His successor, Sylvester McCoy, donned a blonde wig and briefly appeared on screen as the unconscious sixth Doctor. McCoy's face was obscured from camera view, first by the TARDIS console and then by the regeneration FX, before the final reveal of the Seventh Doctor. McCoy thus became the first and only actor to play more than one incarnation of the Doctor.
- Spiral Scratch by Gary Russell gives a "revisionist" account of the circumstances behind the Doctor's regeneration, explaining that it had not happened simply because he had hit his head. Love and War by Paul Cornell offered a different explanation, or at least implied one, although it should be noted that neither theory expressly contradicts each other. Spiral Scratch features the Doctor being weakened after having his chronal energy drained fighting the Lamprey, while Love and War implies that he deliberately flew into the tractor beam to trigger his regeneration, but it is possible that the injuries the Doctor sustained in the beam were simply made worse by his already weakened state and his incarnation could have otherwise lived for a while longer.
External links
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